


Memento Mori

by Colamiilk



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Abuse, Canon - Manga, Canon Compliant, Delusions, Disordered Eating, End-of-life Mentality, Graphic Depictions of Illness, It'd be best to exercise caution reading this, M/M, Small moments of comfort that are overshadowed entirely by just how depressing this is, Starvation, Takes place while Giriko & Justin were in Noah's gang, This is me being salty about how madness is displayed in soul eater, be safe y'all, tinyyy mention of Giriko/Arachne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 18:44:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20511728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colamiilk/pseuds/Colamiilk
Summary: “Justin you’ve been forgetting where you are, haven’t you?”





	Memento Mori

**Author's Note:**

> Read the tags, this is an extremely depressing fic that talks about one of the worst stages of depression/psychosis. There is no suicidal thinking in this, however there is discussion about expecting one's death and not being ready to die. Also if you're worried about the 'abuse' tag, its not Giriko abusing Justin, it's the Clown abusing him. All in all, just be careful reading this and please skip over it if you feel like it might be too much.

His lips were chapped.

His eyes weren’t even open yet but he could feel them crack and bleed with the miniscule movements of his face twitching into consciousness. Justin felt so heavy and cold. Like he was trapped within himself. How appropriate, considering the situation at hand. After all the madness had been relentlessly driving him further and further into weird dreams and delusions that chased everyone away, that made everyone he still had close to impossible to understand. 

Laughing piteously at the sad humor of it all Justin felt his smile split his lip all the way through and douse his teeth with blood. It filtered through the thin gaps between his teeth and danced across his tongue with a horrible copper flavor, it pooled in the back of his throat but he didn’t bother to swallow it back. Eventually it forced him to cough it all up. 

Justin opened his eyes, ignoring the painful crust crumbling into them and scratching at the sensitive white gooeyness. The spray of red crystalline drops flying out of him with his coughing reflected the low light of the hallways in such a way that Justin was actually disappointed when he stopped and they all fell flat. Decorating his face with bloody little freckles. He sighed, but didn’t bother to wipe them away. Instead he turned his head limply to the open hall door with tired empty eyes. Looking for who had disturbed him.

The outline of the person waiting for him was hazy. Blurring into the gold horribleness of the incandescent bulbs. Justin knew he could blink and clear up his vision, but he didn’t. His eyes started to dry and he still didn’t. He didn’t really care enough to put in that kind of effort. It didn’t hurt all that bad. The stinging of his eyes felt like nothing compared to the crushing emptiness inside of him. The black hole that was sucking everything inside him into nothingness. Turning him into this husk that could only smile jaggedly at the person still standing unmoving in front of him.

Static was starting to dance in his vision, begging him to blink. He didn’t grant the request. He watched his entire vision tunnel with the dancing specks. It made the person look like they were surrounded by a golden halo. Justin felt his body twitch weirdly, felt the sharp outlines of his ribs and hip bones as his stomach twisted and remind him of how long it had been since he had eaten. It finally made him blink. He grit his teeth and pushed the pain down, pushed all the pain into the hollowness of his stomach. If he ate, where would all that pain go? He told that to his growling stomach as he clenched his tired hands into fists and felt the thin skin crack ever so slightly around his knuckles. 

When the pangs finally passed he huffed out tiredly, sitting up with far more difficulty than he’d like. He wanted to stay down. To keep sleeping. But he needed to see who was here. Who had found it necessary to come to him in the dead of the night. He rubbed his face with his thin fingers and sighed horribly before opening his eyes again. 

It was bright. Bright with the light of day. Looking down at his fingers Justin was surprised to see they were all bandaged up. He flexed them awkwardly, turning them around to see all the places where the blood had started to dot through. It was alarming, scary to see. Or at least it was until he remembered that he had been biting down on his knuckles hard enough that skin had split like that of an apple. 

Was that before he had seen the man or after? How long had he been up? Scratching at the back of his neck he felt the skin start to sting weirdly, but he didn’t stop. He barely even realized it was stinging. Had he seen the man already? Wait, no that was a dumb question. Of course he had, he couldn’t remember something that hadn’t happened. Unless it had been a dream of course. Had that been a dream? Could you dream about waking up? That didn’t make much sense. That couldn’t of been a dream. But then… what had happened there? 

He didn’t remember. Had he bitten his knuckles after that? What was the order of events here? He didn’t remember. Was his last memory seeing that man or was it biting his hands? Which was more recent? He couldn’t tell. His neck felt wet with his blood. He pulled his hand away from the bloody pit he had dug into his skin and ran his fingers through his hair. He was at breakfast. He could see Noah and Giriko talking about something, Gopher running around with whatever. How long had he been here? Was this a dream? No… No this was reality. He knew it was. 

How did he know it was? His chest felt weird, like nothing but his heart existed. Like it was suspended in the air, floating and vulnerable to all the damage of the world. His legs felt heavy. His head felt like it was tied to a string hanging from the ceiling. Perhaps in a noose. Whatever the case it didn’t feel attached to him anymore. It felt like his body could stand up and walk away without him. It’d probably be best to stop trying to guess what was real and what was fake. It was starting to make him feel sick and dizzy. He looked over to Giriko with his loose head, for a second afraid he was going to accidentally unscrew it from his shoulders and let it tumble to the floor. 

He had meant to say something to the enchanter, he really did, but before anything came out Giriko looked at him with a confused, and then annoyed look. Justin wondered if he had been staring or if Giriko had really reacted that fast. He had a bad feeling he had been staring, but he couldn’t be sure. It had felt like only an instance to him, but from the pissed off look the other was shooting him he had a feeling that it had been much longer than that.

“You alive in there creep?” Frowning horribly Justin looked away, down at all the food they had out. It all made Justin’s stomach turn in what was probably supposed to be hunger, but he could only process it as feeling sick. He wanted to throw up. His face felt weirdly green as he stood up, grabbing the unused plate in front of him to put back wherever it had come from. He didn’t really know where he was going, but he knew he didn’t want to sit here anymore. He spared a last glance at Giriko and smiled smugly.

“You have no room to say something like that, you look like a dead man walking.” Justin wasn’t exaggerating, Giriko’s face was weirdly grey and shiny in a way that made him look post-mortem. A few times Justin had been left wondering if it was from all his drinking, if it was a side effect of body switching and being essentially a zombie with a new soul inside… Or if Giriko looked perfectly fine and Justin was just seeing him through the weird confused lense of madness. They all felt equally likely. Noah raised his eyebrows slightly in amusement as Giriko burst into anger, but otherwise ignored them. Not even looking fully up from whatever he was reading.

“I do!?” Giriko said that loud enough that it broke through Justin’s headphones with a fury. It made Gopher jump with a pissed off expression and Noah leaned back slightly. It was normal for Giriko to yell, but this was basically a scream. Justin looked at Giriko with wide eyes as he stood up from his chair and glared at him with a horrible anger that the guillotine didn’t fully understand. Sure what he said wasn’t nice, but they never said anything nice to each other. It didn’t make sense how angry Giriko was getting over this. 

“You're the one who is literally letting themselves die here! You’re a fucking corpse walking! Have you looked at yourself!?” Justin’s eyes flicked down to the other two people in the room, but neither of them cared enough to make eye contact. Which was expected in all honesty. He looked back to Giriko with a tired expression. He couldn’t find it in himself to care all that much about this. If Giriko wanted to freak out about their appearances this much it wasn’t his problem. 

“Just because I look dead doesn’t mean you don’t Giriko.” With that he turned on his heel to dump the plate back with the rest of them. He could sort of hear Giriko still saying something, responding to what Justin had said with something undoubtedly crude. He didn’t bother to turn to read his lips. He didn’t bother to stop as went he towards the door with every intention to go out somewhere. To drive around just for the sake of letting himself forget where he was. He didn’t get very far before he felt Giriko grab onto his coat’s collar and tug him back.

The tug was apparently far sharper and rougher than it had felt as Justin felt himself tumble all the way back. He watched the door go flying down and the ceiling come up rapidly into view as he fell to the soft bed under him. Blinking he stared up at the darkened fluorescent lights of his bedroom. The covers had fluffed up all around him with the weight of his body hitting down like that. Sitting back up he rubbed his head in confusion. There was a shadow in front of him. He found himself scared to look up. His stomach was knotting up with a horrible dread. His back was sweating. He wasn’t concerned about the weird switch at all this time. He couldn’t be with the pressing horror above him.

“Justin you’ve been forgetting where you are, haven’t you?” The low gravelly voice sounded perfectly through his headphones, it bit into his ears like icepicks, made his shoulders bunch up and his mouth taste bitter. The words hammered into him far too hard. They said it like it was habitual at this point. Like it had been a thing for a while. How much was he forgetting? Were the pieces he was trying to put together moments apart like he though or was he missing full days at this point? His head hurt unbelievably bad, he could feel it pound in tune with his music. His skin was cold and rubbery. It was hard to breathe. He didn’t want to look up. Every part of his body was malfunctioning, trying desperately to stop him from looking up. He gagged slightly. Hives started to burn under his skin. He had to look up. 

“It’s because you aren’t eating.” Justin looked up, surprised to hear that was the reason, and was immediately thrown back with a punch to the stomach. 

He hit the wall behind his bed hard enough that he felt the entire thing shake for a second. Part of him wondered if anyone here had heard the horrible boom it made. Probably. They probably wouldn’t bother to remember it though. They probably would just assume he was having some kind of a breakdown. Looking back up with horrible strained gasps Justin held his stomach weakly. Watching the clown’s distorted face turn like clockwork above him, twisting from a jolly smile to a crying frown.

“Can’t remember where you are, who you are,  _ what  _ you are.” It’s voice sounded so sad. Sad for him. Sad at how pathetic he had become. Justin could only watch with shallow breaths as his vision wavered. It hurt. Everything hurt. He was holding his hollow, bruised stomach, but he really just wanted to hold everything. To curl up and try to hide away from all the pain as if it wasn’t inside him. His brain hurt most of all. It felt hot and liquidus, but occasionally he’d feel snakes of electricity run through the fleshy wrinkles and down his spine. He was scared if he took his headphones out his mind would flood out in a sparkling black and he’d have to see the remains of his sanity slowly trickle away as he went completely blank. 

“How are you going to get anywhere like that?” Snapped back to attention Justin swallowed back the awful frog in his throat. It jumped right back up, keeping him choked up and silent. Not that it bothered him too much. He wouldn’t know what to say even if he could talk. It didn’t bother the clown either, he didn’t want a response, he wanted Justin to think of the failure waiting for him. Of the disappointment he was causing. Justin felt sticky and gross. Like he was being covered in a sludge that made no one want to even look at him. 

“You need to eat.” The way the clown tilted his face up with the utmost gentleness made Justin’s stomach turn. He pinched his eyes closed and grit his teeth trying to sit still. His chest was shoving rapidly with little panicked breaths but other then that he was completely limp. His legs were folded beneath him and his arms were obediently behind him. Excluding the support from his spine, the clown’s hands around his face were the only thing keeping from collapsing into a pile of sharp bones. When one of them pulled away Justin panicked slightly, only calming down when the other hand tightened around his jaw and the clown hushed him. 

“Open your mouth.” He was going to, he had every intention to, but before he had a chance to react the clown pressed against the sides of his jaw and forced it open. It hurt far more than it should’ve. He could feel the bones bend inward ever so slightly, daring to shatter and leave his jaw loose and hung open. The idea made goosebumps cover his skin, but there was nothing he could do but pray that wouldn’t happen. Pray that the clown would finish with whatever he was planning soon. He had his wish granted in a rather unpleasant way.

The bitter liquid that suddenly started to spill into his mouth made him cough and try to pull away, but he was held in place. Left with no other option he swallowed whatever it was, trying to ignore the flavor as it kept going for what felt like forever. He gagged a couple times, shivered in disgust and shook weirdly, but he did it. The clown finally let go and let him wipe his mouth with a sick hiccup. 

“One more thing.” Looking over with an upset expression he noticed the clown holding two small pills. He didn’t know what they were, and the clown didn’t offer any kind of explanation, but he didn’t dare to ask. Reaching out for them he was surprised when the clown closed his hand and moved it above him. Justin’s face morphed into one of poorly concealed disgust, but he nevertheless did what he knew the clown wanted him to and opened his mouth. His tongue stuck out all the way to prove he wasn’t going to try and hide them under there until he looked away. 

“Good.” The praise kind of settled the sickness in his stomach, but not nearly enough. The pills went tumbling in and as he closed his mouth and pinched his eyes shut he felt the clowns hand press over his mouth. Urging him to swallow and end this experience. He swallowed the second he had built up enough salvia and as the clown pulled away he opened his mouth to prove it was gone. Wanting more than anything for this to be over. The clown seemed satisfied enough and began to move in it's weird staggering way to the door. It took everything in Justin’s power to not just collapse in relief.

“You’ll be hungry soon.” With that final message it slipped out the door and left Justin alone in the darkness of his room. He blinked in confusion. Turning around at the window that had just been streaming daylight in he was depressingly unalarmed to see that now the moon was now high in the sky. True to the clown’s words his stomach hurt far more than it had been the past few days. He was overwhelmingly hungry in the worst possible way. He felt like he was going to vomit if he didn’t find something soon. 

Standing up on shaky legs he realized he had to have been sitting there for hours unmoving to get to this state. He stumbled a few times, needing to catch himself on the wall as he moved to swing open his door. The walk down the stairs was far more threatening than it should’ve been. He felt real fear as he let one of his shaky legs tap onto the next step, testing to see if it could hold his weight before hesitantly moving the next one. His legs were  _ begging  _ to give out. They wanted to send him tumbling down the stairs. He was tempted to let them. The hot sore wounds he’d get from falling would at least distract him from the caving pain in his stomach. 

He managed to make it to the bottom of the stairs without succumbing to that urge, but he was honestly a little bit disappointed that he hadn’t gone through with it. It felt horribly underwhelming to have just made it down here. With all the stress that caused him he kind of wanted to have something bad to have happened just to remind him that stress was warranted. To remind him he wasn’t being dramatic here. Sighing horribly he turned the corner towards the shitty kitchen Noah had.

He actually jumped out of his skin when he saw Giriko inches his face right around the corner. Giriko jumped too, yelling something Justin couldn’t understand and stumbling back. Justin’s hand darted out, catching the other before he fell through the floor and disappeared. He caught Giriko pretty quickly, but they didn’t break apart for quite a bit. Not until Justin started to feel awkward and let go with a slightly red face. 

“What are you doing here?” He was really only saying it to move past that awkward moment, but as he looked up at the kitchen and the empty liquor bottle he regretted asking. He wasn’t really interested in hearing about Arachne, and if Giriko found out he had said something about that while he was drunk he’d probably try and kill Justin and/or himself. Luckily Giriko seemed to be sober enough to know not to answer that question and spared them both from dealing with whatever would happen if he did. 

“What about you brat?” Justin’s mouth twisted into a frown, he didn’t really want to answer that, but there was no way for him to get out of it unless he wanted to go back upstairs and let his stomach eat it's way out of him. He looked away, planning to not meet Giriko’s eyes as he said it, but when he saw a twitching figure in the darkness crouching with one of it's feet on the couch cushions and the other on the top of the backrest he figured Giriko was a lot better to look at.

“I was going to get something to eat.” Giriko looked so surprised by that Justin wanted to turn on his heel and storm back up. He didn’t want this to a bigger deal than it already had been with the clown. Giriko seemed to notice his fuming upset and moved behind Justin to stand in the doorway, not-so-subtly blocking him off from leaving. 

“Finally hungry?” The way Giriko said it was supposed to sound mocking but Justin was having a hard time taking it seriously while Giriko was leaning against the door frame like  _ that _ . He had one hand on his hip and the other one was stretched up far above him, so far up that it had to curl slightly down to stay within the frame. Justin had a hard time figuring out if Giriko was trying to be funny or if he was really drunk and didn’t know what he looked like right now. Regardless Justin couldn’t help but laugh ever so lightly and give a small cheeky smile. 

“What if I am?” They were playing at this point and they both knew it, the atmosphere had become light in a way that was becoming increasingly hard to find as of late. For the first time in weeks, or at least with all the time he had been forgetting what he had to assume was weeks, Justin gave an actual smile. It was bright and beaming until it wasn’t. Justin’s eyes widened and his smile froze awkwardly as he made eye contact with Noah, who had just made to turn the corner and had been met with Giriko’s back. 

It was obvious Giriko still hadn’t noticed, or at least hadn’t noticed Noah. Who at this point had taken an excruciating step backwards to retreat back up the stairs and pretend he hadn’t seen anything. Justin wasn’t sure if the sorcerer was uncomfortable or if he had just not wanted to deal with them right now. Probably the latter. Justin’s smile had completely disappeared and even though Noah was long gone he couldn’t stop staring at the gap between Giriko and door where he had been. 

“Justin.” Snapping back to attention he looked at Giriko with an embarrassed blush. God, how was he going to look Noah in the eyes tomorrow? What was he going to think they were doing down here with Giriko looking like this? It undoubtedly looked like they were flirting. Wait, were they flirting? Justin’s face turned slightly redder. Giriko seemed to take that entirely the wrong way though, his face looked grim and horrible and he stood up off the door. 

“Hey, it’s the madness ok? Don’t worry about it.” Justin’s eyes widened as Giriko grabbed onto his arms and brought him into a comforting, almost protective hug. It took Justin a second to realize Giriko thought he was hallucinating or falling out of it again, which he really couldn’t be blamed for after these past few days. Justin held him back with wet eyes as he realized Giriko might of been doing this for him the whole time while he forgot. He found himself horrified to realize how much he wanted to forget. 

All of this was starting to feel like he was holding onto something that was already gone. Like he was clinging to the life he had already lost. His mind was almost entirely gone at this point, he was having a hard time believing just food would fix this. He was having a hard time believing that anything could fix this. It all hurt so bad, the brief moments he was remembering were all awful. All of them but this. And who could say if he’d remember this? Giriko was right, he was a corpse walking. It was due time someone put him to rest. To give him the peace of death he used to sing about.

He choked on a bit of a sob and could feel Giriko hold onto him tighter. Not ready to let him go. He wasn’t ready to let go yet either. He wanted to be. He wanted to end this suffering but at the same time he was desperate to plunge himself deeper into it. He wanted to get the praise he never got from Lord Death from Lord Asura, he wanted to feel fulfilled before he died. He wanted to feel the madness to its extent, to see just how beautiful it was. To see how lucky he was to have this chance, this  _ gift _ . But he was also scared. Scared of what he might become, scared of losing himself so entirely that he wouldn’t even exist anymore. Scared he’d lose Giriko. 

Those fears were the only thing holding him back. And that scared him to know too. Because fear was a side effect of the madness. The academy said it was, the clown said it was. Everyone was in agreement. So all these fears… were they as fake as the fear he felt looking at the eyes that shifted and watched him from their places on the walls and wisps of dead repenters twitching in dark corners? Was he scared of nothing? He wasn’t sure. They felt like real fears, but so did all the other pointless ones that he knew stemmed from something fake.

Pushing Giriko away he looked to the floor with a horribly confused, panicked expression. He… he supposed there was no other way than forward. His death  _ was  _ coming, and if he wanted to feel those things before he died he couldn't sit here stifled by his confusing fears. Something painful climbed up his throat and he grabbed back onto Giriko as tightly as he could. He couldn’t make up his mind. Couldn’t figure out what was right and what was wrong. Following the madness was right, surely, but… Justin didn’t want to let Giriko go. Letting him go even for that second had felt world endingly bad. 

He was starting to breathe weirdly, his vision was spinning. This was all so much and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what was right but he also did. He knew he needed to follow the Kishin but he also couldn’t let go of Giriko. He couldn’t. His grip tightened on Giriko and he felt the enchanter wheeze slightly from the pressure. He was about to have a breakdown, he could feel himself on edge of doing something destructive. His fingers were still bandaged from whenever he had bitten through them, so who knew what he was going to go for next. He wanted so badly to kick his legs and scream. He needed Giriko here, he needed him. He wasn’t ready to let go yet. He couldn’t let go yet. He was scared. He was scared because he knew it was wrong to be clinging to the older man like this, but he also couldn’t let go. He wasn’t ready to go that deep into madness, wasn’t ready to die. He wanted to stay here. He wanted to stay with Giriko even if it was wrong. He was too scared to leave him. 

“Hey kid! Kid! Justin!” From the tone of Giriko’s voice he had been calling for Justin for a while, he sounded panicked and scared. Justin could barely hear it through his headphones as he felt the enchanter try to peel him off. He whined horribly and hung on. Giriko tried a few more times, pushing his hand in between his collarbone and Justin’s forehead and trying to yank him off that way. Justin still stayed stubbornly adhered. He wasn’t ready yet. Giriko seemed to come to a reluctant acceptance with that, realizing there was nothing he could do without actual violence and beginning to pet comfortingly at Justin’s hair. 

With that Justin finally started to relax. He was still on edge and panicky, but the soft distraction was soothing him into a state where he could mostly ignore it. Giriko tried to move him again and this time he listened. He stepped back and let Giriko move him somewhere to sit down. He felt limp and tired, he wanted to sleep. With that one thought it was like a flood gate opened. All of a sudden he realized  _ just  _ how tired he was. It felt debilitating. He was exhausted enough to let himself start to drift off right where he was placed, even despite the fact Giriko had put him right next to the drooling mess of a twitching monster on their couch. He didn’t mind it all that much anyway, when his eyes were closed it wasn’t so bad at all. It kinda reminded him of himself.

“You wanted to eat right?” Giriko had touched his face to get him to see that question. Justin’s heart felt weird when he saw how the enchanter looked almost hopeful saying that, like he really was excited at the prospect of him eating something. Justin wasn’t sure how long it had been since he last ate, since he last had even the slightest bit of a desire to eat, but with how incredibly tired he was right now he kind of just wanted to sleep. Looking at Giriko’s uncharacteristic worry Justin’s mouth knotted up and he caved. Nodding in affirmation even though he really didn’t want to.

A blink, and then he was at the table, staring down at something he knew was food but couldn’t really grasp onto the colors or shapes enough to tell what. Giriko’s head was tiredly on his shoulder, hot breaths puffing out, heavy and slow with his sleep. They must’ve been here for a while. Justin felt the hot eye bags of his exhaustion caving into their sockets. Somehow they made him feel more awake than tired. Maybe it was because they were reminding him of how tired he was, of how he was going to start slipping if he didn’t focus on being awake. Leaning his face onto his hand he ignored how Giriko fell down onto his lap, still not waking up. 

This was getting boring. He was tired of all of this. Running his finger over whatever was in front of him he licked whatever it had left behind off. It tasted slimy and bland like mud. He knew it didn’t taste like that in reality, but he also knew that if he tried to eat whatever it was it’d feel gooey and sandy like a clay doll that was trying to taste as unappetizing as possible so it wouldn’t be eaten alive. It was working, he wasn’t all that interested in trying to choke it down. Pushing the plate away he licked his finger again surprised to taste tainted gauze. Ah. He hadn’t noticed he had touched that through his bandages. Catching the gauze between his teeth he yanked it off and spat it out to the side.

His finger hadn’t healed at all from whenever he had wrapped it up, which wasn’t all that surprising. His body didn’t have the energy to heal him anymore, didn’t have the resources to heal him anymore. He flexed the finger tiredly and watched a fresh stream of blood start to leak out. It stung, but not in a way that felt normal. His pain felt second hand, like something he was imagining, like something he was feeling on someone else’s behalf, if even that. It felt so detached from him that he didn’t even blink as it started to drip onto the table in thick drops. 

For a bit he was entertained with just watching himself bleed, but he quickly grew bored again. He felt so dead. He wanted to feel alive again. Looking down at Giriko he poked at the other’s face, at his bridge piercing. Giriko’s face twitched a bit in annoyance, but he didn’t wake up. Justin sighed and let his head rock limply back to stare at the ceiling. A cold tear ran down the side of his face, but he didn’t feel particularly sad. He was just  _ bored _ . What was he doing here? All this pain had winded up into this? That was horribly underwhelming. He felt like had been cheated out of something more interesting than this. 

If he was going to hurt he wanted it to  _ hurt _ . This was just annoying. He was starting to get frustrated with how much everything felt like a dream. Shouldn’t everything feel dramatic and exciting when you were approaching an untimely death? Why did it feel so much like he was just creeping up on it slowly and quietly? He wanted something more exciting than this. He wanted the pain of being alive etched into his soul before it was all ripped away. 

All he got was that same figure outlined in gold watching him from the kitchen door. Looking over with a glare he met it head on. It wasn’t real. He knew it wasn’t. But it was the closest he was going to get to seeing him again. 

“I still feel pretty holy you know?” Lord Death didn’t move, of course he didn’t. Justin wasn’t really expecting him to anyway. He sighed at the lack of response and traced his fingers ever so slightly against Giriko’s back. Drawing crosses and eyes, watching them grow little legs and bite at each other. Fighting for dominance. Fighting to be the one regarded as ‘truth’. A dumb war of ideals. He knew it was dumb, but he couldn’t stop himself from pulling his hair out over it.

“I feel closer to you than I ever have before. I feel your embrace coming over me with every second.” Looking back up to the figure his eyes felt slightly wet, his chest so heavy and he could feel his toes curl up with how unhappy he was. Lord Death still wasn’t moving, he might as well have been a cardboard cut out. Justin knew his words were falling heavy and wet into the night, disappearing into the hot tar of madness to never be seen again. He couldn’t help himself from praying that Lord Death was still somehow hearing him though.

“I’ll be dead soon. Did you want that for me? Did you want my soul to pass over into your domain sooner rather than later?” It was a far too hopeful wish. It felt hot passing over his tongue. It tasted sinful. Asking for too much. Asking for what he was far too undeserving of. Asking for Lord Death to give him a reason. As if he deserved some kind of apology here. He felt bad, dirty for demanding such a thing. But he also felt an anger bubbling under his skin. Upset over how unfair this all was.

“Probably not. I know you don’t care that much. That I’m not worth that much.” His words were sharp and venomous, cutting up his tongue and making him swallow gorey thick blood down. Scratching dark welts into the side of his face he looked away from the unmoving hallucination with a fury. 

“If you really write our fates, why did you decide this one for me?” Another question he was unworthy to ask. He couldn’t bring himself to care if he wasn’t supposed to question his god anymore. He had spent so long unquestioning. He wanted answers. He wanted to know why he had been fated to die like this. He had barely lived yet. 17 wasn’t that old at all. He wanted to feel what it was like to be an adult. Why wasn’t he allowed to have that? Why- 

“Why make me love you so much if you were going to abandon me?” 

He was choking back tears at this point. The misshapen dripping rotting monsters that loved to crawl on their floors looked up and rested their heads on the table, looking up at him in pity, giving him a comfort that only made everything worse. He let out a tired laugh as one of them had it's head start to cave in as it nuzzled against his face. The gesture was far too kind. The madness was far too kind to him. Far more than Lord Death had ever been. Luring him into it’s warmth, promising comfort and support in his final days. He was scared of it, scared of how crazy it’d make him to hold onto these illusions with such love. But he wasn’t sure what else he had.

“Is this a game to you? What are you planning? What do you want to happen?” It was quiet and desperate. Begging. He just wanted to know. He was fine with being a pawn here, or he at least knew there was no point in fighting it. He just wanted to know why. Why he had to die. What he was being used for. What was going to happen once he was gone. He wanted to know what he was helping accomplish here. What new world Lord Death was trying to build with this war. He had to be planning something. There had to be more here. There had to be something Justin was missing. Something that was going over his head. He could taste it, feel it, but he couldn’t grasp onto it no matter how hard he tried. He-

“Who are you talking to?” Giriko’s voice was groggy and annoyed, obviously having been woken up by Justin talking. Justin blinked in surprise but otherwise didn’t react as Giriko sat up horrible and stiff. He probably should’ve been expecting this. The enchanter didn’t bother to look around for who Justin was talking to as he straightened back up to his full height. He already knew it was no one, he was asking who Justin was seeing. Curious about what kind of conversation he was having, if he was getting any response or not. Justin wasn’t interested in telling him.

“Who do you think I’m talking to?” Giriko rubbed his eyes and smiled in a way that felt horribly depressing. It was full of all his sick humor for the situation. At how ridiculously insane Justin had become. At how it had all started to feel like a sick joke because surely a person couldn’t become this disconnected from reality. He looked back at Justin with a pitying, pained expression. Justin could taste how the enchanter’s heart bled. 

“Fuckin’ no one.” Smiling Justin leaned back for a second, humming in acknowledgement before he stood up to leave. Giriko looked torn between stopping him and just letting him go. It was clear that the pain of watching Justin decay was starting to become too much for him. Justin’s smile turned sympathetic and sad. He wouldn’t blame Giriko for giving up, he honestly had expected the man to long ago. He had honestly never expected the man to even try to put up with him in the first place. 

“Yeah, you’re right.” Giriko’s hand closed around his wrist. Stopping him, begging him to not fall any further. Justin laughed tiredly and rubbed his face with a cold broken hand. They both knew he didn’t have any control over that, but Giriko was desperate enough to hope Justin would somehow manage to break through. Justin looked down at him with a bit of guilt. He felt the slightest bit bad for being this way. He felt bad that even now he could only see Giriko’s face as shifting shards of colors. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been having a Month. That being said I'm fine though don't worry aha. I went back and forth on posting this, but figured I might as well since I went through the effort of editing it and everything. Hopefully someone out there ends up enjoying it. Until next time~


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